Ranking European Countries On 2013 Electrified Car Sales

I recently wrote a long piece on ABB Conversations regarding electrified vehicle sales in 17 European countries—with a chart for each one. It was a lot of fun and very interesting, but it also made me realize that I never did a ranking of European countries regarding 2013 electrified vehicle sales. So… below are five charts and a little commentary.

This first chart, perhaps a bit too packed, shows total electrified car sales, 100%-electric car sales, and plug-in hybrid car sales for these 17 countries:

Pulling out the bottom 5 countries helps a bit to see things better:

The next chart takes a look at 100% electric car sales only. As is usual, France took the #1 spot here, followed by rather small (population-wise) Norway and auto giant Germany.

And here’s a look at plug-in hybrid electric car sales:

Hmm, the Netherlands crushes it (“thanks” in part to an expiring government incentive for plug-in vehicles). So, let’s have a look at the chart minus the Netherlands:

My overall commentary is that electrified car sales across Europe were quite unbalanced in 2013. There’s a steep drop-off each step down from #1 to #6 in the overall and the 100% electric car sales charts. The plug-in hybrid car sales chart is of course completely whack with the Netherlands included, but it is a bit more balanced than any other chart with the Netherlands removed. Of course, none of this takes into account EV sales as a percentage of total car sales, EV sales per capita, or EV sales relative to anything else. If such a ranking were created, France, Germany, and the UK wouldn’t look as strong. Meanwhile, some of those leading Scandinavian countries as well as Switzerland would look even better than they do above. However, it would be interesting to actually see such charts… (so maybe I’ll get to creating such rankings another day).

It will also be interesting to see how things turn out in 2014. With Volkswagen and BMW bringing some competitive electric cars to market, things might get shifted around quite a bit. Plus, EV costs continue to drop and EV awareness continues to rise, all with rising sales. I’m looking forward to tracking the progress throughout the year and doing next year’s wrap-up pieces!